Saturday, November 22, 2008

Understanding the Thinking, Mentality and Philosophy of the Chinese

I have to say here that I do not read people's comments since they are too scared to reveal what their level of intelligence and standing in society is. If they do not have an identity, they do not have any views worthy of anyone considering. Worse, one cannot use these comments in one’s research on the subject.

This is an attempt at studying the thinking, mentality and philosophy of the Chinese in the world especially those who live outside of the Chinese world.

When will someone conduct a more serious research on this following the wake of the earlier doctoral thesis a Chinese scholar had done which was later published in a book called, ‘History of Chinese Immigration to Nanyang’ which tells the sorry tales of how the Chinese had to flee from South China to go to Southeast Asia with barely anything on them except for the clothes they were wearing?

The then President of Taiwan, Lee Teng-Hui, called the Chinese in Singapore uncultured as they are descended from the people of South China. This was when he had a spat with the Minister Mentor of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew. Yet, Kuan Yew didn’t bother to challenge the other Lee, almost as though Kuan Yew knew he didn’t have anything to contradict.

But I am going to be charitable and not describe the Chinese in Singapore as what the President of Taiwan had said.

There are Chinese everywhere – in Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Singapore and almost all the countries in the world and in different numbers ranging from a few hundred to a few million.

The way the Chinese behave and try to exert themselves differ according to which country they are in and how many of them.

The only difference is in what numbers and percentages and the way the Chinese behave is according to these factors.

If they become larger than the local native population such as in Singapore, they will demand and get the ultimate power to control the whole island and in the process cause the extinction of the Sultanate of Singapura.

Yes, Stamford Raffles called it Singapura, while his successor who could not speak much Malay, mispronounced it as Singapore.

In Indonesia, where the number is smaller and comprising only three percent of the total population of the country, they accept everything including being ‘forced’ to study in Indonesian schools and not make any unnecessary demands on the government, lest they will get it in strange ways.

Only lately, however, are they allowed to have their own television programs in Mandarin and you can now hear the Indonesian Chinese speaking in Chinese – Mandarin, Cantonese and Hokkien mostly, publicly without being chastised. Only a small percentage of them convert to Islam, and speak the language of the majority there.

In the Philippines, the number of the Chinese is even smaller. And because of that they have no choice but to assimilate with the local population comprising of the Filipinos, even calling themselves Filipinos and speaking in Tagalog and English. They do not speak Chinese or clamor to have their own schools.

And because of that they are able to get some of their own kind appointed as President of the country starting with Corazon Aquino (photo left). She does not call herself Chinese and only rarely does so and on any of her visits to China, she would visit her ancestral village in south China.

The same with Thaksin and Samak who are prime ministers of Thailand. Both of them are Chinese, but they do not have Chinese names or are able to speak Chinese. They also have Thai names and do not wish to be referred to as Chinese.The reason being the number of the Chinese in Thailand is very small. And despite controlling the economy and politics, they cannot exert their Chinese-ness that much, lest they would lose support of the average Thais who are comfortable accepting them for who and what they are.

CHINESE IN AMERICA:

In America, the number of Chinese is also small; they restrict themselves to Chinatowns and find their own entertainment watching movies from Hong Kong and listening to music from this country. They do not have any ambition of forming their own political parties because they know they can never go anywhere.

If there are Chinese who have been appointed to office, they have to run on the Democratic or Republican Party tickets.

Yet, they can and are allowed to build their own schools and temples, but they do not want to waste their time doing so; they are more interested to save whatever money they have on their companies and themselves.

CHINESE IN MALAYSIA:

The Chinese in Malaysia, however, are in a special position: their number is larger. At one time they were forty percent of the population with many of them who are actually poor and in abject poverty.

No wonder they refused to return to China where they could not show their newly-found wealth to their relatives. So they chose to remain in Malaya as punishment for their failure to get their proverbial pot of gold here.

Their off-springs were the ones who had to slog so they could become successful and become more fused with the land, unlike their parents who had failed to do so and who still thought they were Chinese nationals owing no allegiance to the country they were now at.

However, over time, this percentage has been reduced to only 25 percent. It is a small percentage, compared to the percentage of the native Malay population which stands at around 60 percent and growing rapidly so that by 2050, it will be 80 percent.

Yet, the Chinese in Malaysia think they can exert themselves and demand all sorts of things without admitting it and pretending that no one would figure it all out.

The Malays have been kind in accommodating their every needs so much so that the economy of the Malays has been in shambles.

With no land, money or property when the Chinese first came here, they started work as menial laborers and renting houses and land which they developed and eventually started owning them. Most of the ‘night-soil carriers’ were Chinese with some Indians and almost no Malay.

And now we can see how many Malay lands where ancient villages and old paddy fields had stood have been redeveloped by the Chinese as their economy expanded. And the Malays have also been too supportive of their economic growth by allowing themselves to be used as the customers of their business, which continued to expand and grow purely on the strength and support of the Malays, without which the economy of the Chinese could not grow at all.

And not enough with this, they are now craving to have political power, too. Many have even challenged ‘Ketuanan Melayu’.

Is it wrong for the Malays to have their own slogans? Is it wrong for the Malays to carry their ‘keris’ in whatever ways they like? Who are the others to ask the Malays not to carry them?

Now it is the ‘keris’; tomorrow it is the ‘songkok’; then what? Bahasa Melayu wants to be described as Bahasa Malaysia, yet they are not interested to master it.

Only those who want to be in politics have no choice but to know this language lest they cannot take part in any political debate. Just like the lawyers who have to use Malay in the court or they cannot fight any case and have to do office work only.

But when will they start to demand the use of English in the courts? This can happen.

So, you, see it is the numbers that make up the equation.

One cannot deny that if the number of the Chinese in Malaysia rises further so that they are more than the Malays, then surely their behavior and demands will become more ridiculous.

MALAY CHIEF MINISTER OF PULAU PINANG!?

No Chinese or Indian wants to talk about how Pulau Pinang can also have a Malay as their chief minister. All of them want to ask when a Chinese (not an Indian) can be Prime Minister of Malaysia. That possibility is as good as asking when a Malay can be the vice-chancellor of UTAR and the New Era College.

What if they have full control of Malaysia: Wouldn't they also want to change the Constitution, too?

FIXING THE MALAY POPULATION IN SINGAPORE AT FOURTEEN PERCENTSingapore had a way of balancing the ethnic composition of the races. They knew the Malays have a natural way of expanding themselves, numerically speaking. There used to be only 14 percent of the population of the country when the country left Malaysia – or were ‘sacked’ from Malaysia.

Now the population of the Malays has been ‘fixed’ so that it does not increase. The Singapore government will ensure that this remains so. And they would ‘import’ Chinese from foreign countries particularly the wealthy ones from Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan and China, to ensure that the percentage of the Chinese population remains at 70 percent.

Early Malay leaders were not smart; they did not have evil ideas and insisted on keeping Singapore in the Federation because they did not wish to play the Devil by expanding the population of the Malays so that it exceeds that of the Chinese including those in Singapore by encouraging the immigration of Indonesians to the land.

If they had done this, then surely the population of Malays in Malaysia can be a lot more now and that multi-ethnic strife that we experience today would not happen.

Many Chinese and Indians in Malaysia blame the government for ‘allowing’ Malays from other countries particularly Indonesia to become its citizens or permanent residents which they say is a strategy to increase the population of the Malays.

But they ignore the fact that the Singapore government had been doing it more feverishly so as to ensure that the population of the Malays remain ‘fixed’ at 14 percent.

Yet, the Malays in Singapore do not complain about this. The reason being they are too small and insignificant to say anything.

It’s all about numbers. Go figure this out.

BABA AND NYONYA AND THE OTHER CHINESE

So now you know why the early Chinese who had come to Melaka in the Fourteen Century became known as Baba and Nyonya, who speak only Malay and were able to assimilate with the local Malays.

With only 500 of them, they had no choice but to speak in Malay so that they could be understood and not rejected. They could not exert themselves.

However, with the tide of immigration of the Chinese in the Nineteenth Century, more Chinese were able to come to Malaya so much so that they were able to exert themselves.

It was fortunate that the Malay rulers had intelligence and were able to think or guess what the English colonist masters wanted to do – which is to displace the Malays in their own sultanates, just like what they had done in Singapore which had become a ‘Chinese country’ as it still is.

If the sultans were not smart enough, the population of the Malays in their own states or sultanates would not form the majority and their position in their own states would become weak. So sooner or later, they, too, would have to go.

The special position of the sultans today is not due to the presence of the non-Malays then but solely rests on the support and strength of the Malays. Therefore, they, too, should be eternally grateful for the Malays for keeping them where they are now, for without them, the sultanates would have been displaced long ago, even without the British doing anything nasty.

So it was good that the sultans were able to exert themselves and got the support of the Malays and outdid the British who were outsmarted until they were forced to sign documents that in effect forced them to leave the country in shame before it became worse than it was for them, and before the whole of the Malay Peninsula became another Singapore – a Chinese state.

CHINESE IN INDIA AND OTHER COUNTRIES

I pity the Chinese in India, Bangaldesh and Pakistan and all the other poorer countries; their numbers are so tiny that they have no choice but to keep quiet. No Chinese would want to migrate there because they know they could not benefit from doing so.

They only want to migrate to countries that are already prosperous so they can take advantage of it, like Australia, England, Canada, New Zealand, so they can be more English and less Chinese.

There is no Chinese representation in the Lok Sabha or the parliament in New Delhi and chances of any of them of ever being appointed chief minister of any of the states in the country is as good as Osama bin Laden being offered American citizenship or permanent resident status.

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